Dune (video game)
Dune, by Cryo Interactive, is one of the Dune computer games. It was the first attempt of making a commercial game based on Frank Herbert's Dune universe. Dune blended adventure with economic and military strategy, and is considered by many the most immersive Dune computer game. Loosely following the story of the novel, the game casts the player as Paul Atreides, with the ultimate goal of driving the Harkonnen from Dune, while managing spice extraction, military, and later, ecology through the native Fremen tribes. As the player progresses, his troops are equipped with weapons from "crysknives" to atomics, tap into Paul's latent psychic powers, and get acquainted with such characters from the book as Chani and Liet Kynes. Available for the Amiga and IBM PC compatibles, it was one of the first floppy games to be converted to CD format, which included footage of the David Lynch movie, voice-acting for all speaking roles, and highly improved, 3D-rendered travelling and location screens. This version (a mix of the Amiga graphics and the extras of the PC-CD version) was also released on Sega's Mega CD format. Also worthy of mention is the audio track created by Stéphane Picq and Philip Ulrich, released by Cryo (formerly Exxos) on the now extremely rare album Dune: Spice Opera. Overview The story is mostly based on the novel's story: The player is Paul Atreides, son of Duke Leto Atreides and Lady Jessica. The House Atreides was given an unrefusable offer by the Emperor Shaddam Corrino IV - mine the Spice Melange from the desert planet Arrakis, occupied by their long-time enemies: the House Harkonnen. Duke Leto accepts the offer not only because of the wealth provided by Spice trading, but also to defeat the Harkonnen. The game, seen always through the eyes of Paul, is a mix between Real Time Strategy and adventure gaming. While the basis of the game is the strategy component, dialog between characters and a linear plotline give the game more depth than most strategy games. The player is also required to do some miniquests involving talking to characters and traveling to locations, which adds a small adventure game element. After arriving on Arrakis, the story itself becomes entirely different. The only Atreides character to canonically die is Duke Leto and Arrakeen is never attacked by the Harkonnen. In fact, Arrakeen already belongs to them, the Atreides Palace is located in Carthag (which belongs to Harkonnen in the book). Most of the game is spent looking for sietches and eventually directing the whole planet. There must be a balance between military and spice mining power. While having a strong military force will provide fast response to the Harkonnen, if Spice isn't mined fast enough to keep up with the Emperor's demands, the game will be lost. However, if there is too much focus on spice mining, Harkonnen troops can ambush a sietch, capturing all troops inside. They can only be rescued if the sietch is liberated. Since the game is as much resource managing as military conquest, balancing both is the key for successful completion. Units and items The Atreides House has no military or spice mining units. Soon in the game, Paul must meet the closest Fremen leaders and convince them to work for him. In the beginning, they will only agree to work as spice miners. After Paul is introduced to Stilgar, the tribes will agree to work as either spice miners or military soldiers as Paul chooses. After he is introduced to Liet Kynes, the tribes can also take ecology as their occupation. All tribes will increase their ability in their chosen occupation. Spice prospectors do so by spice prospecting in many sietches. Spice miners do so by mining spice. Military troops do so by training in their sietches (if Gurney Halleck is in the same sietch they increase their ability at a faster rate) or successfully completing military missions. All tribes except the spice prospector tribe can change their occupations, although it is better to keep a tribe in the same occupation. Experienced spice prospectors can prospect spice faster. Experienced spice miners can mine more spice. Experienced military troops are more effective in military missions. However, there may be situations where changing a tribe's occupation is required. For example, if a large number of military troops training in a sietch is captured by Harkonnen forces, more military troops need to be raised from the spice or ecology troops to liberate the sietch and rescue the captured troops. Although the Fremen agree to work for the Atreides in order to depose the Harkonnen, if there are tribes from both hemispheres in the same sietch, they will quarrel and refuse to work (this seems to happen frequently with the spice miners). Morale (affected by contacts with Paul, Atreides advancement in Arrakis, the progress of ecologists, and whether Chani is captured or free) also affects the speed and capabilities of the tribes. The Ornithopter (Orni) is the default transport method for Paul until he's able to ride sandworms. With the Fremen, they are used for either moving from one sietch to another quickly or as an early warning against sandworms attacking spice miners and prevent Harvesters from being swallowed. Harvesters increase spice mining speed, and can be either bought from smugglers or found in sietches. Weaponry ranges from crysknives, laser guns, Weirding Modules and the powerful atomics, and are usually found on sietches or conquered Harkonnen fortresses. Areas Arrakis is split into numerous areas, each with a single structure which Paul may visit, and other characters may be sent to. Each area has a unique name, composed of two parts. The first part of the name represents a region (like a county - for example, the areas directly surrounding the Atreides Palace are all called "Carthag-"). The regions usually comprise of 4 to 8 areas with sietches, and optionally one village (with the exception of Cielago region with just 2 areas). The structures may be any of the following: *Palace - Both the Atreides and Harkonnen have a palace which serves as their base of operations. There are only 2 palaces. *Sietch - Caves where the Fremen make their homes. Much of the game is spent uncovering sietches hidden in the desert to meet new troops and find new equipment. Sietches which Paul has found represent Atreides-controlled territories. *Fortress - Harkonnen bases, usually with Harkonnen troops stationed and occasionally, captured Fremen. These bases are the targets of the player's military attacks, and represent the Harkonnen-controlled territories. On rare occasions, after winning a battle over a fortress, there will be a captive Harkonnen captain there that your troops can handcuff, allowing you to interrogate him and discover the locations of other Harkonnen fortresses, their troop numbers, and their armaments. *Village - Neutral territories where you can find smugglers who sell equipment. There are 6 villages in total. The vast majority of all areas are sietches and fortresses (62 together), which the battles are fought over. When one side wins a battle, their troops will transform the structure to their liking (Fremen troops transform fortresses into sietches, whereas Harkonnen troops transform sietches into fortresses). Some sietches and villages are "marked on your map" by characters you talk to during the game but there are quite many that you have to explore yourself. This is done by taking an orni or a worm and flying/riding in the correct direction. When you get close enough, the person with you notifies you of the sighting and the sietch/village appears on your map. Therefore, you must always have someone with you to explore new areas. Though you may discover new sietches by blindly traversing over the unexplored areas which is excruciatingly inefficient, a complete map, however, is not necessary to accomplish it in a more efficient and convenient way. What helps is talking to Fremen chiefs. When a troop is stationed in a sietch in the vicinity of a not-yet-explored one, their chief will tell you that there is a sietch nearby, and in which direction. But they will only tell you this information when you talk to them personally, inside their sietch. However, most sietches and villages are only discoverable after reaching a certain stage in the gameplay, not earlier. And, of course, this stage is different for every region so that you are only able to explore the planet gradually, as the game progresses. This here is a 100% complete map of all explorable areas which might help you during the gameplay and to discover unknown areas: The names are trying to take up as little space as possible while staying self-explanatory. The first two letters are region names, the second two are sietch name within the region. Palaces and villages have no suffix as it is quite obvious (Villages are always named Region-Pyons). The regions are: Ar - Arrakeen, Ct - Carthag, Tu - Tuono, Hb - Habbanya, Ox - Oxtyn, Ts - Tsympo, Bl - Bledan, Eg - Ergsun, Hg - Haga, Cg - Cielago, Si - Sihaya, Cm - Celimyn; sietch names are: Tb - Tabr, Tm - Timin, Tk - Tuek, Hg - Harg, Cl - Clam, Ts - Tsymyn, St - Siet, Pt - Pyort. So e.g. CtTm (the prospectors' sietch) is Carthag-Timin. The Harkonnen fortresses are marked with blue, the information is based on the binary data from a 1st day savegame. There is a sietch which is normally impossible to explore - Celimyn-Tuek, marked with a red center on the map. This is due to a bug in the game's initialization data but can be easily fixed with a hex editor without even spoiling the game by making it visible too early (or by even making it visible). A quick how-to without a deeper explanation: Save the game at any time (even in the day 1). Within the saved file, find a sequence 0C-05 (this is the sietch number internally). It should be followed by 6 bytes which may vary and another 7 going like: 03-00-80-FF-F7-04-00. By changing the FF byte to 58 you get just the right behaviour - when you reach the appropriate stage in the game, the sietch becomes explorable by flying over and even Fremen stationed nearby will notify you of its existence. Mining and economics Each sietch/fortress area contains a quantity of spice melange. The large desert in the southern hemisphere has the largest Spice reserves, but all new areas need to be probed by the prospector troop. Once an area has been prospected, the prospectors can move on to another sietch. However, unlike in the books, Spice is not renewable in the game. After all the reserves in an area are mined, the area is permanently depleted of spice and can only be used for ecology and military training from then on. Spice (not the Solari) is the currency in the game, and serves two purposes: paying the Emperor to be able to continue play, and purchasing equipment from smugglers. Duncan Idaho is the character in charge of your spice economy, and, when asked, will call Paul's attention to outstanding payments to the Emperor and to smugglers. Military Fremen specialised in military are the only troops capable of conquering a fortress or defending a sietch. They can also perform espionage on Harkonnen fortresses, reporting on the number of enemy troops and their type of armament. Fremen military troops can be ordered to attack the fortresses. A successful mission depends highly on morale, skill and armament, so early in the game espionage is much harder to achieve without the troops being captured by the Harkonnens. Paul's presence during a battle increases the men's morale. He can boost their morale even more if he comes along on a worm and even further more he controls the battle personally (but then risks dying if the battle is lost). There are two ways for Paul to control the battle personally. Self fighting modes Massive Attack Paul will order his troops to launch an immediate full scale war. Fight for a day Paul will order his troops to reserve their resources and fight for a whole day. Ecology As soon as Paul meets Liet Kynes and drinks the Water of Life, Arrakis can be terraformed by having Fremen troops specialise in ecology. Since it only happens late in the game, the northern sietches are usually barren (but any spice remaining will disappear), and by moving ecology troops there, they can assemble a windtrap, and provided they are equipped with bulbs, vegetation will always grow to the north. Vegetation raises the morale of Fremen. In addition, planting the vegetation south to the Harkonnen controlled areas, so it will grow north and reaches them, will lower their spice production. Moreover, if enough vegetation grows north into Harkonnen fortresses, they will abandon them. A military unit must still be sent then to take over such fortresses, but there will be no one to fight with. Nevertheless, it is generally agreed amongst players that ecology is of a lower priority than both spice mining and military, hence most players tend to deploy lesser amount of troops to ecology. However, by having enough vegetation growing north into the Harkonnen Palace, ecology is actually one of the ways to reach the end game. Paul's abilities ]] At the start, Paul is given the task of meeting the Fremen. As the game progresses, he learns the ways of telepathy (progressively, from short range to planet wide) and using sandworms as transport. His charisma also influences his ability to gather Fremen under the Atreides' flag, as some chiefs will not work for Paul or do military assignments if his charisma isn't high enough. His progress can be partially seen in the mirror at the Atreides' Palace - his eyes turn more "blue on blue" (Eyes of Ibad) as his abilities increase. Characters The game follows loosely in-off-between the book and the 1984 movie by David Lynch (Paul Atreides was designed to look like Kyle MacLachlan, who is actually credited as Paul Atreides). Only a few characters are removed from the movie, clearly the biggest visual inspiration for the game, such as Shadout Mapes, Piter de Vries and Reverend Mother Ramallo. Some characters' roles have changed, however, such as Harah who follows Paul about in the earlier stages of the game. End Game Paths to The End Game The only way to win the game is to launch an attack on the Harkonnen Palace. While technically it could be done at any given time (as long as Paul has military troops to order around), Paul's troops can't win this battle unless he launches it only after Thufir Hawat advises him to do it. Then he must follow exactly the suggestions Thufir Hawat provides him on how to win. However, there are two alternate paths to cause Thufir Hawat to give that advise. The military path to the end game Thufir Hawat will advise Paul he's ready to take over Harkonnen Palace, if enough Harkonnen fortresses are taken over by Paul. Harkonnen fortresses are discovered either through espionage or when the Harkonnen manage to take over sietches. The ecology path to the end game Thufir Hawat will advise Paul he's ready to take over Harkonnen Palace, if so much vegetation grows north into the Harkonnen Palace, that they are forced to abandon it. Just as it is with abandoned Harkonnen Fortresses, Paul must still send troops to the Harkonnen Palace for an official takeover. However, unlike the abandoned fortresses that pose no fight, the abandoned Harkonnen Palace still can't be taken over without following Thufir Hawat's suggestions on how to beat it. The final battle Once Paul is advised by Thufir Hawat to take over the Harkonnen Palace, he must follow his exact suggestions on how to accomplish it. Thufir's suggestions to Paul are to ready a large number of troops (at least 10,000 men total) in the sietches around the Harkonnen Palace (only the three sietches immediately neighboring the palace count), and to also bring the bulk of Paul's ally characters to one of these sietches. When the troops and colleagues are there with Paul, Thufir Hawat suggests to launch the attack on the Harkonnen Palace. In order to win the battle, all of the troops need to be at Expert level in fighting and carry all of the weapons available in the game (krys knives, laser guns, weirding modules, and atomics). As usual, it also boosts the troops' morale if Paul comes along on a worm and especially if he joins his troops in the fighting (in either of the two self fighting modes). If Paul's troops win, Paul gets a vision telling him to enter the conquered palace. Once he does so, the player gets to watch an automated end game sequence featuring Paul's prisoners, including the treacherous Emperor of the Galaxy, and ends with Paul taking over as the new Emperor. Avoiding the automated end game sequence There is a way to avoid the automated end game sequence and keep on playing forever as the (supposedly - see below) Emperor of the Galaxy (without being able to leave Dune though). To accomplish this, as soon as Paul orders his troops to launch the final battle, he must quickly ride a worm into the battle before it could be won without him. If timed correctly and the battle is still in progress, Paul must quickly choose Massive Attack (it must be this fighting mode). The battle is then won without Paul getting a vision. Paul must then avoid entering the conquered palace and instead go back a screen and wait for two days to pass - the standard time it takes for a conquered Harkonnen fortress to be turned into a sietch. Paul can then enter the palace - now also turned into a sietch - at any time and talk to his new prisoners - Baron Harkonnen, Feyd-Rautha and the Emperor of The Galaxy. From then on, the player can keep playing. There will be no one to fight with, no need to send spice to the Emperor (which, supposedly - although this way there is no official sequence to show that - is now Paul) and no new sietches to discover. At last, Paul can finally get Liet Kynes to walk around with him. This may not work when using DOSBox emulator and the CD version of the game, but there have been documented sightings of this working even with that set-up. Game Tips General Tips * If you are unsure of how to progress in the game, talk to all fremen chiefs you have discovered thus far while in their sietches - they may point you to other sietches, which might be necessary for progress to be triggered. It is best to do this when you recruit them - they rarely have more to say later that they didn't say then. * Also, talk with all main characters (everyone in the Atreides palace, Gurney, Harah, Stilgar, Chani, and Kynes). One of them may have a task for you. This becomes less important in the latter stages of the game, as scripted events grow fewer and farther between. * Pay attention to your visions - you usually receive them only about events that you should react to. * Make sure to send spice shipments to the Emperor soon after he asks for them - if you fail to deliver long enough, you lose. Travel * Riding a worm may be cool, but ornis are much faster. However, you cannot fly an orni into Harkonnen-controlled areas - you will be shot down, resulting in a game over. You are safe on a worm in Harkonnen areas. * Do not wander aimlessly into the desert on foot - you will die. After a few "moves" around the desert, you will see a cut image of a scorching sun. Turn back immediately at that time at the latest. * Fremen troops will move faster between sietches if you give them an orni, but they cannot attack Harkonnen fortresses airborne (for the same reason you cannot - the Harkonnen have airspace defenses). * If you give the spice prospector troop an orni, they will move much faster between sietches. They don't need any other equipment, nor will they benefit from it. * Whenever exploring, it is best to have at least one companion (doesn't matter whom) - companions are needed to spot unknown sietches, and will warn you if you are flying an orni into Harkonnen airspace, giving you an option to turn back safely. * Whenever flying an orni or riding a worm to a specific destination, the journey can be skipped using an option in the main interface. This greatly reduces tedium. Time still passes as it would otherwise if the journey is skipped. * Prospectors need to be given three sietches to go to next, but these can include sietches that have already been prospected (in which case they will just pass through unless it is the last sietch on their route), and their movement orders can be updated while en route, if they are in range of your telepathy. ** When updating orders, the first time you are asked to do so selected sietches will be added after those already queued (up to the maximum of 3); if you update their orders again (or if they already have 3 sietches to go to), you will be able to choose all 3 destinations again, canceling the previous route. If the prospectors are between sietches at the time, they will redirect immediately from wherever they are in the desert. Spice mining * The game has a very useful map overlay showing spice density (accessed from See Dune Map / See Spice Density). Bright yellow means the most spice in an area, while black means fully depleted, with shades of brown in between. Not all areas start at the same density. * The spice density overlay can be switched to show sietch occupation instead (occupation can also be seen, color-coded, on mouseover of sietches in the density view). * Speed of spice mining depends on: troop size (number of men), experience with mining (gained with time on the job), motivation (same factors as for motivation of military troops), equipment (harvester greatly increases mining speed; orni prevents swallowing of harvester by worm), and density of spice remaining in area (areas close to running dry produce little). * You are generally fine with about 5 miner troops sized 1,500 - 2,000 men, so long as they have both harvesters and ornis. If the same troops are used from game start, by late game they will have reached Expert in mining. They can be moved from area to area once they mine a place dry. * You may want to move troops to a new area before it completely runs out (black in spice overlay) - at ca. the last three density levels (dark shades of brown in overlay), there is very little spice left and production is slow. If needed, you may move troops back to these areas once all richer areas run out. * The game effectively has a time limit - even if you buy nothing from smugglers (hard to win that way), the Emperor will request shipments indefinitely, with his order volumes growing by an arithmetic series. By contrast, the total volume of spice on Arrakis is fixed. Even if you destroy none through tree-planting, eventually the Emperor's demands will overtake the maximum possible mineable amount. Play times over 100 in-game days are generally not recommended. * Planting vegetation destroys all spice in the area instantly, one step of game time passage after work is begun. When vegetation is actively grown in an area for a long time, it spontaneously spreads - always northwards - destroying all spice in any other areas it reaches once its leading edge gets there. It is recommended to grow vegetation in mined-out areas, whose northern neighbour areas are, additionally, also depleted. * You can save some spice by haggling with smugglers over purchase prices. They will not always be amenable to it, and the discounts are not game-changing, but especially in earlier game some economies may be achieved. Preferentially haggle on more expensive items (ornis, weirding modules), as the discounts are percentage rather than flat. It is not recommended to haggle with the Emperor, as he will not tolerate that for long. Military *Each Fremen troop assigned to "Army" (military duty, troop icon in red) can be equipped with 4 tiers of weapons: Kris knives, laser guns, "Weirding modules" (a man-portable sonic-attack weapon), and "atomics" (nuclear weapons), in that order. The first 3 tiers can be bought from smugglers or found in sietches; atomics can only be found in some conquered Harkonnen fortresses. *If you equip a troop with a higher-tier weapon, also let it keep all lower-tier ones. All of them count for the troop's fighting power (although higher-tier weapons improve their performance more). In any case, lower-tier weapons are more common, so you are unlikely to have a shortage of them. *A military troop does not need to have any weapons to fight, but they will do extremely poorly if unarmed. *Equipped weapons have no effect on the speed of military training. *The proficiency levels a troop can have in military matters are, in order: On Trial, Novice, Average, Efficient, Skilled, Expert. Once troops reach Expert, they do not improve any further. Before that, skill can be increased by training (see below) or by fighting battles. (Note: Skill levels have the same progression for miners, prospectors, and farmers - although all of these can only improve "on the job"; training is only available for army troops.) *Fairly early in the game, Gurney Halleck will ask you to take him to a sietch so that he can help train Fremen army troops. Improvements from military training are ordinarily slow, but if the troop trains in a sietch where Gurney is present, they will advance much faster. **It is thus recommended to pick a "boot camp" sietch (ideally, one unlikely to be attacked by Harkonnens) where you will concentrate green troops to train, with Gurney there to help them. If necessary, Gurney can be moved by asking him to come with you as a companion and dropping him off in another sietch, while military troops can be ordered to move around like any other Fremen. **Troops that have reached Expert can (and should) be moved out of the "boot camp" sietch, as any sietch can only hold 7 troops at once, and Experts don't need Gurney anymore. Further move orders to a full sietch will be refused. Once you've sent Expert troops elsewhere, you can order fresh recruits to move in for training. *Troop morale depends mainly on your progress through the game, how well you've been faring in battles against the Harkonnens, and how the Arrakis re-vegetation project is progressing. (In fact, many players find the ecology part of the game mainly useful to boost morale - it can be used to bypass military conquest as well, but progress in that manner is slow.) **You can improve morale at a particular battle by fighting alongside your troops personally, more so if you fight riding a worm - although if fighting personally, worm or not, you risk a game-over if you lose the battle. **Winning a battle significantly improves the morale of troops that participated in it, and also applies a small boost to morale planetwide. As such, late in the game, if you are consitently conquering Harkonnen fortresses, morale usually remains universally high. *About midway through the game, a sickness will appear in an occupied sietch. You will need to leave Chani there to cure it. She succeeds in a few days, but when you come to pick her up, she will have disappeared. Shortly after you receive a message from Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen (Baron Harkonnen's villainous nephew); it turns out Chani has been captured. Until she is freed, Fremen morale planetwide will be capped at 10%, regardless of what it would be otherwise. **Chani is usually in one of the fortresses near your territory; she may even be in an occupied sietch (see below) if any still exist. You can send spies to locate her, or you can come across her if you simply attack. In either case, she will be freed if you conquer the fortress where she's located, and Fremen morale will return to normal. **Keep in mind that until Chani is freed, your minimal-morale troops will not do very well in fights. Make sure to have sufficient superiority before trying to free her. *Early in the game, the Harkonnen will occupy one of your sietches, usually one of those north-east of the palace at Carthag. After that, they may occasionally pick a random nearby sietch to attack (where and when they attack can change on reloading a save). **If you have troops in any of the attacked sietches, there will be a battle; if you win, the Harkonnen are repulsed for the time being, while if you lose your troops will be captured (stuck at the conquered sietch until you conquer it back). Non-army troops will be captured outright. **It is not advisable to rush any and all troops you may have to try and free these sietches right away - if they are too few, too poorly armed, or too green, they will only be captured as well. Leave the Harkonnens to their spoils for the moment - this will not result in a game over, and the captured troops will not disappear. **The Harkonnen will keep attacking your sietches every once in a while until you have successfully conquered at least one fortress (an occupied sietch counts too). After that, they will never counterattack anymore. *As a rule, your troops should be Skilled or better and have at least laser guns (better: Weirding modules, too) before you attack anything. Their morale should be at least around 50%, their troop size should be at least around 1,500, and you should send more troops than the enemy has armies. This applies to freeing occupied sietches as well as to conquering fortresses. *You can assign troops to "Espionage" duty. (Despite the name, the activity is probably better described as "scouting".) This option will only be available if as-yet-undiscovered Harkonnen fortresses are near the sietch where the troop is located. **Scouts will trek out into the desert, find the nearest unknown fortress, mark it on your map, and, after they've been there for a short time, will give you a report on the number of enemy troops there (visible on the map; ranges from 1 to 3) and an appreciation of their strength. **You will only get the verbal comment on the strength, with no indication on the map. If you move the scouts out, you will need to remember what their intel was. The strength level comments are, in order and paraphrased: ***Lowest: "I take it that they might be dangerous" ***Mediocre: "The Harkonnens are strong here; well trained, too." ***Good: "The Harkonnens are very strong, and they have arms, indeed." ***Strongest: "We have the toughest Harkonnens here, armed to the teeth." **Note that the verbal comment relates to per-troop power; it is independent of the number of troops. A single troop of the "strongest" Harkonnens might be an easier fight than e.g. 3 troops of the "good" ones. **Once you have this information, you can order the scouts to move back to one of your sietches (then possibly to scout again, if more nearby enemy positions remain undiscovered), or let them stay where they are. You can order them to attack, or you can send more troops to attack that forttress, in which case the scouts will automatically join the battle once the other troops get there. **Scouts can get captured, in which case you will gain no information aside from the location of the fortress and you will need to send someone else to free them. If they are captured at all, this will happen shortly after they arrive; if you get the report on enemy strength, the scouts have succeeded and will not be captured no matter how long they stay. **The chance for scouts to be captured seems to depend mainly on their military skill, equipment, and possibly morale. Unlike actual battles, however, troop size does not seem to matter. (Even a small troop of less than 1,000 Fremen can successfully scout any fortress in the game if Expert in military and equipped with the first 3 weapon tiers, provided that morale is reasonably high.) **Sending more than one scout troop per fortress is fairly pointless; try to send a single troop of skilled, well-equipped, and well-motivated Fremen instead. If you have small-sized troops with high military skill, these are ideal for scouting duty. *When fighting battles, your troops can suffer losses (the troop's numbers will decrease). If multiple troops fight together in a battle, very small troops can ocassionally be entirely destroyed even if you win. *To some extent, losses are unavoidable, but they can be greatly reduced if you fight with massive superiority. (This includes many troops attacking at once, troops being well armed, well trained, and having a high morale.) *You can get an indication of how a battle is going by contacting troops when they are attacking. If they say that "it will be easy to rout the Harkonnens", you will win, with minimal or no losses. If they say that many of them have been killed or captured while killing few (or no) Harkonnens in return, you will lose, with most likely high losses and the remainder captured. **This might change if you ride with them into battle on a worm and / or if you fight personally, but there is a risk of a game-over if you lose anyway. Your participation only affects morale, so if the reason for the loss is something else (low numbers or skill, poor equipment, some combination), it likely won't change the outcome. *There is also a visual indicator available by clicking on the fortress being attacked. You will see a graphic representing a red (you) and blue (Harkonnens) arm wrestling; the arms will move towards either side depending on who's winning. If the battle is almost finished, the winner's house symbol (Atreides: hawk; Harkonnen: ram) will be shown next to the arm-wrestling graphic. *Occasionally, Harkonnen spies will damage some mining equipment at one of your occupied sietches - this will halt spice production there and make affected troops unable to receive new orders for a few days, until they've repaired their equipment. There isn't much that can be done about this; on the other hand, these events aren't very frequent and resolve themselves without any action from you. These events continue even if the Harkonnen are no longer counterattacking (see above). Economy *Ignoring spice mining (which is covered in greater detail above), the spending side of your economy is actually very simple - you only need spice to satisfy the Emperor's periodic demands, and to pay for purchases from village smugglers. In other words, as long as you remain able to pay off the Emperor on time and in full (i.e., without haggling with him), you are free to spend all the rest of your spice on smuggler purchases. *The Emperor's demands arrive in random intervals usually ranging from 4 to 7 days apart, and increase in an arithmetic series - i.e., each subsequent demand is higher by a set amount, rather than a percentage. Thus, you do not need to worry much about the size of the Emperor's demands growing out of control. **His first demand is around 1,000 spice, second - around 2,500, third - around 4,000, fourth - around 6,000. Subsequent demands tend to increase by between 1,000 and 2,500 units each time. **As discussed above, the total amount of spice available on Arrakis is fixed, so playing for too long will eventually lose you the game; however, there is plenty of leeway unless you play quite badly. *Your daily spice production can always be ascertained by talking to Duncan Idaho in the palace at Carthag. This is also where you need to go to send spice to the Emperor and to pay off smugglers. (Note that if you have purchased from multiple smugglers, you will need to re-initiate the dialogue with Duncan to pay each of them, as he will only cover the oldest outstanding smuggler demand in each conversation. You do not need to wait or even leave the room to do so, however.) *Make sure to move your mining troops to new areas once wherever they are mining has run dry. (Note that the last 3-4 levels of spice density give low yields and represent only a small proportion of the total spice that might have been originally available in that area, and are not necessarily worth mining to the last dreg.) Also make sure to prospect new areas as soon as possible so that you actually have somewhere to send the miners to next. *So long as you can at least maintain constant daily spice production, you can estimate how much you will mine before the Emperor's next demand and approximately how much that demand will be (remember, last demand plus 3,000 is probably a safe estimate; keeping in mind that you can bring up old messages in the communications room to review the size of the Emperor's previous demands if you wish). **If you come up with a surplus, you can spend essentially all of it on smuggler deals. If it turns out you might have a shortfall, you should prioritize increasing your spice production - adding more mining troops, equipping miners with harvesters and ornis if they do not already have them, moving miners from mined-out areas to fresh ones, etc. *Once you leave their village, smugglers will not trade with you again until they've been paid for the last deal. (To pay them, see Duncan at the Carthag palace - details see above.) However, they never demand payment up-front, nor do they ever check your credit. I.e., you can buy everything each smuggler in each of the 6 villages on the map (or as many of them as you have already discovered, anyway) has available at one time without paying for it, and nothing will happen except that you will not be able to buy there again until you've settled the account. **In the long-term, you will still need to cover your purchases to keep buying new equipment, but if you have a temporary shortage, buying "on credit" this way can help you meet the Emperor's demands and gain some time to improve your economy, without having to skimp too much on your purchases in the meantime. *Past a certain point, additional purchases from smugglers are not really needed to progress in the game. You only need so many miner (harverster + orni) and military (first 3 weapon tiers - tier 4, Atomics, cannot be bought) troops before you have enough to last the rest of the game. Once you have reached that point, you may as well stockpile spice - as a challenge to yourself to see how much you can amass how soon, if you like. The spice is useless otherwise in any case. **Again, this is assuming you do not play badly. Remember, only fight when you are confident you will win (ideally, without large losses), and keep all your spice miners outfitted with harvesters and covered by ornis. (If you lose a troop in battle, you will probably need to find a replacement and re-equip it with new weapons. Also, the planet only has a finite number of Fremen. You can afford to lose a few troops whole, but you should try to minimize that. As for miners, without ornis, you will periodically lose harvesters to worms, necessitating replacement purchases and leading to greatly reduced spice output due to mining by hand in the meantime.) Game Technology The game was one of the first floppy disk games to be ported to the new Compact Disc format. The Compact Disc format was much more expensive to produce and thus carried a higher sales price. The Virgin Games edition was the first Compact Disc game to have significant sales in the first week. The Virgin Games edition of Dune was commercially successful, with sales of over 20,000 units in its first week alone and more that 100,000 units in the first year, despite a high price point. The Sega Mega CD version had graphics close to the Amiga Version, but offering the extras of the CD IBM compatible version. Those extras are snippets from Lynch's film, voiceovers and new travelling screens. The game is considered to be one of the most complete of its time. The quality of the full motion video in the Sega CD or Mega CD version was considered to be some of the best that was ever shown on the system. Game Packaging The game was the first video game to make use of the game cover printed on a sleeve and then slipped over a preprinted, Virgin Games branded box. This combo became the industry standard for the next two decades. The new styled box was created by Anthony Mesaros for the US office of Virgin Games. He had created the sleeve design because he wanted to be able to get flashy covers printed in several colors as well as foil and yet create a box that cost significantly less that printing the individual game covers on individual boxes. His new packaging design not only came in at a much lower cost but had less than half the turnaround time for actual printing. Soundtrack Virgin also released Dune: Spice Opera, a music CD from the tunes composed by Stéphane Picq. It was originally only shipped with a special version of the game, and is one of the most sought-after video-game-related music CDs, only surpassed by a few records that were only ever released in Japan. Sequel What is erroneously considered a sequel to this game, Dune II - The Battle for Arrakis, was not made by Cryo, but rather by Virgin Entertainment's newest acquisition, then-unknown software company Westwood Studios, in 1992. Given the success of the game, Westwood produced two more sequels, in 1998 and 2001. However, Cryo returned to the Dune universe with Frank Herbert's Dune in 2001, which was one of the final titles by the French company. The game failed on both markets and reviews, and was one of the final nails in Cryo's coffin. External links * [http://www.aitpast.com/games/dune/dune.htm Detailed information about Dune (french only)] * Dune at Squakenet ru:Dune (видеоигра)